Last week, Maine’s best-known writer, Stephen King, got mad at the state’s biggest newspaper through Twitter because it said it would stop buying freelance reviews of Maine-based books for its book page, instead relying on the national book reviews by AP that it already pays for.
As you can see in the Portland Press-Herald’s description of what happened (read it here, complete with Twitter screenshots), the paper pleaded economic necessity but said it would resurrect local reviews if 100 people bought digital subscriptions. Because of King’s involvement this drew a lot of attention and eventually more than 100 subscriptions were sold despite King’s reticence: He huffed that it smacked of blackmail.
All New Hampshire newspapers, including the Concord Monitor, are trying to sell more digital subscriptions to make up for falling print subscriptions.
Obviously what we need to do is get Dan Brown of “Da Vinci Code” fame mad at us on Twitter!
Hey, it worked in Maine – why not in New Hampshire?
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